


Irregular

by electrumqueen



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Gen, Guerrilla Warfare, Interspecies Relationship(s), Motherhood, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 15:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5460710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/pseuds/electrumqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Don’t say I never did nothing for ya,</i> says the Ellimist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Irregular

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MakeTheYuletideGay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MakeTheYuletideGay/gifts).



  
  


I fell in love with my husband a long time ago, when I was very young. He was a strange person: an alien person.

We came from different worlds.

This is not a metaphor.

  
  


-

  
  


I am a runner, in my heart of hearts. I was a runner when I played softball, even though I had a good eye and a great hand.

I thought I would be less of a runner, when I met Alan.

For a while this was true: for a while we shared a home, and a life, and I let myself slow down enough to have a child.

(He is beautiful. He is perfect. He is the best thing that I have ever done, will ever do.)

  
  


When you are a runner, you learn very quickly that each pause is only that: momentary.

I had not known that my husband was a runner, too.

  
  


But I should have seen it coming.

  
  


-

  
  


My name is Loren. I live in a series of shitty short term rental homes with my teenage son. His name is Tobias. He is a very good shot.

This is, probably, the best gift that I have ever given him.

  
  


It is much better than that other gift: the truth.

If I could have lied to my son for all his life, I sometimes think I would have.

But this is not a choice I was given. It wasn’t a choice I could pass along. Shoulda taken the blue pill, Loren. (Nah. That was never an option. Not really.)

  
  


-

  
  


We have been running for a long time. Running, I suppose, to this moment.

A woman at a construction site, with her blonde hair cropped short and a gun in her hand: guns work just as well on alien slugs as they do on normal people. A woman blinking her way past a riot of warning lights to enter a downed spacecraft, whose technology is familiar to her from long ago.

  
  


<Loren,> says my husband, who is a blue deer with a scorpion’s tail, who is lying on the floor of a spaceship, bleeding all over the metal, all over my hands when I bend to touch him. I haven’t seen him for fifteen years, but I would know this specific blue alien deer anywhere. Across galaxies, I would know him. This is not hyperbole. <Loren, is it you?>

I smile at him, sharp-toothed, razor-edged. “You’ve been away a long time,” I say. I have become very good at hiding all the things I no longer wish to feel. “Welcome back.”

  
  


\--

  
  


The story does not begin there, on the steel-grate floor of an Andalite fighter ship, crippled by the force of its landing. It begins much, much earlier; on a ship operated by a species known as the Skrit Na, where a teenage girl and a boy named Chapman have been abducted. Perhaps it begins even before this, with a girl in a softball diamond waiting for her father to show up, into the endless yawning twilight of summer.

But this is all a story my husband Alan knows. He is well-educated, after all. He has crossed galaxies. He has fought in wars. He spent four years learning everything there was to know about me. He stuck it out all that time, and then he left.

  
  


I spent four years with him. I know a thing or two myself; the story he wants to know is this:

A blond boy, my teenage son, perched outside the ship. His gun is alien tech, scavenged from a fight that gave him the scar on his right cheek.

My son: my best thing. The best thing.

My son, who loves me, but is also so, so afraid of what I will do next.

I’m so sorry, Tobias. Carve these words on my headstone. They are the only way I have lived my life.

  
  


-

  
  


My husband is dying. I have seen aliens die before, but never one of his kind. There is a lot of blood. His left side is a mess, a mass of burns that distort the loveliness of his alien form.

I have steeled myself against all of these lesser hurts. I sit, and I offer him my hand.

<They’ll come,> he tells me, whispers it into my mind with the familiarity of all those years; as though he did not leave me, fifteen years ago. As though he did not weigh up me, and the war, and find me wanting. <You have to leave. I came here to defend you, I thought I could - but I can’t.>

Andalite hands are weaker than those of humans. It took a long time for Alan to adjust; to learn to throw a ball. We played softball every evening for two weeks. He liked it. He was good at it.

It was easy to fall in love with him. He loved things. He loved me. There’s something compelling about that.

He curls his fingers around mine. <Loren,> he says.

“I always loved you,” I say, quietly. “I wasn’t even angry, when you left.”

<Bullshit,> he says. I keep looking at the burns. They’re so ugly. He was never ugly. That’s the thing about Andalites.

“Okay,” I say. “I was fucking pissed.”

  
  


-

  
  


The time: fifteen years ago. The place: not this town, but a town very much like it. A college town, where the summer air is hot on your shoulders. Not too far from where I had grown up - close enough that we could visit my mother. Not too close, so we wouldn’t have to.

The university was good, for my husband. My brilliant husband, who had given up the stars to wear a body like mine. People were already talking about how he would revolutionize several fields.

We were already worrying about that: we could read the news. We had seen that the Yeerks were coming. We did not want to be found.

(This is a lie; neither of us had ever liked the idea of running from a fight. I had grown up scrapping in the park and Alan had been a warrior.

Both of us, I think, were hoping, somewhere deep inside that the war would come, so we could fight it. So we could be worth something again.

But this is solely speculation. I have no proof, one way or another.)

  
  


I am sitting on the porch of our cheaply-rented little house, looking up at the stars. I am waiting for my husband to come home so I can tell him about the ultrasound that I have had. So I can show him the little picture and say _look this is our son, look at what we have made._

A man is coming down the path. I shield my eyes against the sunset and wave; from this distance I can’t really tell who he is, but nobody comes out this way. It is somebody who is looking for me.

“Loren,” he says.

I get up and walk down the steps to greet him.

It is not my husband.

It is my father: I would know those wry eyes, that face anywhere.

“What are you doing here?”

“I have news about Alan.”

I am beginning to realise that something is wrong. My father is older, now. He has grey hair and is beginning to stoop. We don’t talk often, but he is sometimes around, if only to disappear again.

This man is young: this man is the one who taught me to throw a fastball, who swooped me up onto his shoulders and called me a plane. The one who walked out of my ninth birthday party and didn’t come back.

“Who the fuck are you?”

The man shrugs. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought a familiar face might help.” He runs his fingers through his hair, like my father used to. “They call me the Ellimist.”

“Where’s my husband?” I ask. I am thinking about things he has told me. _What is an Ellimist, Alan? You told me about Yeerks and Taxxons, why not -_

I remember.

“I took your husband back to the war,” says the Ellimist in my father’s voice, holding out my father’s hands. His intonation is a little bit off. My father has a drawl.“We hoped that it would not reach Earth, because of him.”

  
  


He offers me a choice. I am sitting there in the dirt on the road to the house I rent with my husband, my alien husband who has left me for the war; I am crying, hot and wet, and the air is sticky on the collar of my shirt, and there is, even now, an ultrasound image tucked in the back pocket of my jeans.

I am in no fit state to make a decision but every time I have looked back and thought _maybe you could do something else_ I have not regretted this choice.

He says, “I can help you forget. It will be like he was never here. You can raise your son in peace.”

This is the Andalite way. I married a war-prince, and he was kind to me, as kind as he knew how; he fought off a large weight of the history of his people, but there is still a coldness amongst them. They are a species born of space, living at war.

“They’re on Earth,” I say. “Yeerks.” There is a collection of newspaper clippings in my desk-drawer, right above my filing cabinet of prenatal information. We try not to talk about it but it is the thing that haunts us: huge in the bed between us at night.

“Not as they might be,” says the Ellimist. “They won’t be strong for a long time, yet. They might never be, if Elfangor wins his war.”

The name tastes different in my mouth. I am so used to calling him Alan. I thought I had tamed a wild animal. I thought we had been one and the same.

He had always been alien.

“Ignorance is not peace,” I say. “What else can you do?”

The Ellimist, not my father, steeples his fingers. “I can give you information,” he says. “Some things you can’t un-know. I sent Elfangor to fight his war; you can fight here. If you like. It wouldn’t be safe. You might die. You might leave your son, too.”

  
  


I don’t make it through my second trimester in that house.

It is too quiet a town. I am too busy learning to modify a gun. There are things you can do to make sure that a bullet will pass through an energy field.

 _Don’t say I never did nothing for ya,_ says the Ellimist. It is exactly what my father would have said.

  
  


-

  
  


I don’t know what I expected to find. Not this.

  
  


“I didn’t think you would come back,” I say. “Honestly. I didn’t.”

<Didn’t think I would either,> says my husband. It has been so long since I saw him, since before he took human form and trapped himself on Earth. It’s been a long time since a god said, _take it back,_ and he did.  <I didn’t want to leave. >

“You did, though.”

It doesn’t matter. I don’t know why I’m saying it.

“You’re here.”

<I’m dying,> my husband says. <So.> He pauses and then he shifts, leaning into my hand. It must hurt. <I’m glad I got to see you. You look - different.>

“I look older,” I say. I can hear the strain in my voice, the way it is brittle and on edge. “You have new scars, too.”

  
  


“Mom,” Tobias says, voice crackling on the walkie. “Chatter on the police scanners and the back channels. They’re on their way. We need to do what we’re going to do and get out.”

My husband jerks his head up, his entire body following that movement. He yearns. I understand this longing: I have felt it every moment of my life.

“Clear in here,” I say. “Be careful.”

Tobias looks like me; he has my nose, and my hair. It is easy to dye, which is a blessing. He has Alan’s voice, and a little of his tranquility. I have always been sharp, quick to speak.

He slips in, through the door, and my husband’s whole body shutters, desire writ large, in all the long lines of this killer’s form.

“Shit,” Tobias says. “That’s-”

“Andalite,” I say. “Yes.”

Tobias shakes his head. “Long time coming,” he says. “Thanks for your support, war-prince.” If I had said it, it would be unkind, cruel for the sake of it; Tobias simply observes.

<Loren,> says my husband. <I am dying.>

“Happens to us all,” I say. I turn to Tobias. “We have to get him out. Into the car, we can get into the woods.”

Tobias raises both eyebrows. I taught him that look, or maybe it is inherited. Either way, I understand what my mother said when she called me a handful. “I think the Visser’s coming.”

I have made it this long without coming into contact with a Visser. All good things must come to an end.

I dip my head, so only the alien can hear me.“Love, honour, protect,” I whisper.

Both of us, we keep our oaths.

  
  


“I need a minute,” says Tobias, very calm.

This is another thing I taught him: do not show weakness. Do not show division.

The alien’s fingers twitch, open and shut. He is dying, but this is his son.

“Yeah,” I say. “We’ll check the perimeter.”

Part of me doesn’t want to leave him.

<I’m not dead yet,> he says. <Go.>

  
  


The night is cool, and crisp. The stars are very bright. The air tastes clean.

Tobias raises both eyebrows at me. “Saving aliens isn’t what we do.” Not an accusation, not really. An observation.

“Andalites are different,” I say. Firmly. I am still his mother. “They fight the Yeerks. If they can help us, we have a chance.”

He looks at me with his calm alien eyes. “Or they’ve come here,” he says, “because it’s finally worth their notice. Because it’s finally serious.”

“It’s been feeling pretty serious to me.”

“They’ve been escalating,” he says. “You know they’ve been escalating.”

I hate being afraid. I am used to it, the way fear coils like a sick snake in the bottom of my stomach, the way it pushes down on my shoulders and makes me slower, weaker. Familiarity breeds contempt. I hate this weakness in myself.

I don’t know how to fight a different kind of war. I am not winning this one.

I think Tobias does. I think that’s what I raised him for.

The thought of it is terrifying. It is the worst thing I have ever done.

“We can’t move him,” Tobias says. “Not while he’s that hurt. We have some stuff in the car, I’ll go and get it.”

“Be careful,” I say.

“Always am,” he says.

“I love you.”

He smiles. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I know.”

  
  


<Tell me about him,> says Tobias’ father.

“You left,” I say.

<Loren,> he counters.

“Okay,” I say. I sprawl down along the grating, rip off a long line of the bottom of my shirt and press it to the first of the burns. “Okay. I can do that.”

  
  


-

  
  


Tobias is born in the middle of the woods. I have been living off the grid: no water, no power. All I can see are alien tendrils, winding through everything. The whole world. They are not comprehensive, not yet, but they will be; nobody knows. Nobody can fight.

Once I thought about saying something but I know what happens to whistleblowers. I wouldn’t believe me, if I heard myself.

I tried to tell my mother. She looked at me and said, _Is that what’s on TV tonight?_

I don’t have any proof. I can’t save anyone else. Not yet.

  
  


I think, I can hide. I wrap my arms around his tiny screaming body and think, _I can keep you safe._

  
  


But I am not wired for that. I would not raise a child like that. On the run, afraid, hiding. Pretending that the world is safe. Pretending that if we don’t rock the boat, we’ll be fine.

I try my very best. I keep my head down, keep my heart still, try not to read the news.

We last two years.

I am very young. And despite everything I am hopeful.

  
  


Tobias is two and I have learned the rhythm of him. It was awful, at first. I was alone and he was sick, often, and I was too afraid to leave; too afraid because of all the things I knew. Knowledge is power, but it is also crippling. I have lost so much. My life has been reduced to only the barest necessities: like a spaceship. You take only what you need to keep you alive.

Me, and Tobias. The bare essentials.

The Ellimist visits often. It’s strange. My husband told me Ellimists were like, gods. But this one just sits with me, in the body of my estranged father, and soothes my son when he cries.

Tobias is two, and the Ellimist says, “Are you ready now?”

I take a breath and kiss my son’s hair and say, “Yes.”

  
  


-

  
  


<You have fought a war,> the alien says.

“Everybody does,” I say. The ship is humming in a way that sounds distressed. I wonder if there is a self-destruct setting that’s been activated by this crash, or if we will do what action movies say is the result of a crash-landing and erupt into a solar flare. “I couldn’t let him end up like the poor fuckers you probably spent twenty years blowing out of the sky.”

He winces. <The Ellimist told you.>

“He didn’t have to,” I say. “You told me what your people do. He told me you wanted to save us. I’m human but I’m not stupid. We’re not a slow species. We’re just a little behind, technologically.”

<You’re amazing,> he says. <An amazing and atypical species.>

I roll my shoulders back and stretch out my legs. “It took me a long time to not want to hate you,” I say.

<Well,> he says. <That would make one of us.>

“He’s good at offering you things,” I say. “Things that sound like a good idea at the time.”

<He offered you memory?>

“He told me I could keep Tobias safe,” I say. “That’s why you left too, isn’t it?”

<It seemed like the only thing I could do,> he says.

  
  


We took the medkit a couple of months ago: we found a ship landing out in the middle of nowhere and got lucky with some explosives. They have started to bring in more and more troops. It’s becoming less and less subtle.

It’s pretty effective, though. There’s some good shit in there.

<This isn’t from Earth,> my husband says.

“You don’t know that,” I say. “You haven’t been here in a long time.”

Tobias says, “Mom?”

I laugh, and wipe my hand across my mouth. It is sticky with alien blood and that ichor that forms over burns. “I told you about aliens,” I say. “I told you how I got to know about them.” I jerk my thumb at the dying alien. “This guy,” I say. “It’s all this guy’s fault.”

It sinks into Tobias’ shoulders; he exhales and then straightens up. “Elfangor Sirinial Shamtul,” Tobias says, crisp on the syllables. The way I taught him to say it. He nods. “Thank you for saving my mother.” He tosses me the all-purpose patches we’ve been using: probably more effective than god knows what’s been on my shirt.

<She saved me,> he says.

Tobias shrugs. “Okay,” he says.

I unwrap the medical patch and press it to the burns. It must hurt, but my husband doesn’t blink.

<It is an honor to meet you,> says Elfangor.

  
  


I wipe my fingers off on the denim of my jeans. They are probably a write-off. They look like I have been painting. “Okay,” I say. “We need to go.”

<No,> says Elfangor. <I asked for this. To see you. I’m going to die. They’ll hunt if they don’t find me.>

I exhale, sharp. “Nah,” I say. “That’s not the call.”

Tobias says, “You saved her.” And then he pauses, this awkward little half-smile that I think looks like mine. “Don’t worry. This is what we do.”

  
  


-

  
  


The first time my son asks me about his father, I am surprised. I shouldn’t be. We have television. He talks to other people. He knows that I am not supposed to be alone.

But I don’t know how to talk about it, about Alan. I have to think of him as _Alan_ ; to acknowledge the alien, even in my own head, feels unsafe. We rigged time to let us have what we wanted. Believing is more than half of doing.

I cannot think that my husband was anything more than a disappeared PhD student.

I say, “Sometimes people just don’t have fathers,” and I smile at him, as reassuring as I know how to be. “I don’t, either. But I love you enough for both of us.”

I cannot say, _he is somewhere but he loves you._ I can’t lie to him. I won’t.

He left me.

He left _Tobias._

One of these is forgivable.

  
  


I infiltrate a research lab. It is easier than it ought to be; the information is all online, easily accessible. I think the Ellimist helped me out. I didn’t use to be quite so capable. Maybe it was going to space; maybe it was having an alien husband.

Maybe it was knowing that everything I did mattered now: not just for me but for my son.

There is a handgun tucked into the back of my jeans, under my jacket. I have set a contingency plan. If I die, my mother will be able to find my son. That’s the best I can do.

  
  


I have thought about this, a lot. I could stay and hide; I could protect my son by being close to him. But the thing is, infestation happens anywhere, happens everywhere. I could come home one day and not be myself.

I can’t risk that. I can’t risk being the body that takes my son to a pit from hell and pushes his head into that goddamn parasite-infested slime.

I need to kill them all.

  
  


People underestimate, always, how easy it is to be kind and also to suspend morality. I am a kind person, I think. I do not think it has left me.

I am numb, often. But not unkind.

My morality has shifted. I have had to let it go.

But I can still be kind. That’s all we can do. All we have left.

  
  


When I was abducted by aliens, a lifetime ago, I was not alone. There was a man with me. His name was Chapman. He was kind of an asshole, honestly. He didn’t take well to seeing alien spacecraft. He tried to sell us all out, our entire planet.

Things did not end well for him.

Not that they ended well for me.

For anyone, really.

At least he got out of it without a Yeerk in his head. That’s all we can be hopeful for, at the end of it.

  
  


I never thought I would see him again. The Time Matrix changed us all. It’s a big old world.

“You need to get out of here,” I say, booting up the computer. It’s easy to get into these things. Alien tech: it’s intuitive, once you learn how. Their interfaces are centuries ahead of our own.

“What?” The man has big bones and a familiar face, set in a security guard’s uniform. “Who are you? You don’t have permission to be in here.”

I scan the first file. “Okay,” I say. “I’ve set explosives. This whole place is gonna go up in fifteen minutes. Is that a good enough reason?” I could shoot him. It would be quick. It might even be merciful. One shot, easy.

He sets his mouth in a thin, straight line. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Here’s a better reason,” I say. “Chapman, right? You’re on this list for future experimentation. Here’s what they’re going to do to you.” I swivel the screen, turn it around. “Doesn’t look like fun to me.”

Chapman wasn’t smart, back then, but he also wasn’t stupid.

  
  


We run.

I’m a good runner. I’m fast. I can get out of shit. I’m used to there being a Taxxon on my ass.

He’s not particularly good. He moves his arms and legs for inefficient dividends and has to throw up when I shoot the Taxxon.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“Doesn’t matter,” I say. “Keep your head down, stay out of trouble. They’ll forget about you.”

“What are those things?”

“It’s an alien invasion, baby,” I say. I don’t say, _it’s your fault._ There’s no point. “We’re becoming an endangered species.”

  
  


I get home, check to make sure Tobias is safe in bed, and shower. Hot water, the hottest water I can manage. It runs through my hair and I gasp through steam, thinking about what it was like to be a child at the end of the universe.

It’s weird to think Chapman survived. But he doesn’t remember. I wonder if the Ellimist offered him the same deal, and he said _no._ If he didn’t feel like he ought to save the world.

That seems like it tracks with what I remember of him.

  
  


“I’ll tell you about your father when you’re older,” I say. A compromise. This is the only way I know to be kind.

Tobias shifts into the span of my chest, tucks his head under my chin. He still trusts me, then. He still thinks that I can keep him safe. That I know the right thing to do. That I’m even capable of knowing the right thing to do.

“It’s complicated,” I say. “He loves you. I think. I’m sure he does.”

“But he’s not here,” Tobias says.

“No,” I say. “No, he isn’t.”

  
  


-

  
  


We have been sitting for what feels like forever, but no time at all. It turns out there is a gash in Elfangor’s side, from a piece of the ship that detached when he crashed. Poor design, if you ask me.

There is a lot of blood. It is everywhere. I feel soaked in it, drowning. Like I can taste it.

I have never been this bloody.

Not since Tobias was born.

I don’t even know if this patch is doing anything. I know that they work on humans - me, Tobias, a girl in Fresno we held in a cabin for three days until the slug fell out of her head - but Andalite physiology isn’t human.

  
  


<I need to give you something,> says the Andalite. <Something important. Loren, there’s a blue cube near the console. Can you->

“Sure.” It weighs less than I thought it would; the texture of the surface is unlike anything I’ve ever touched. I trace the corners, the edges.

The shade of blue is like the color of Elfangor. It ripples in the light.

<It’s a morphing cube,> Elfangor says. <The technology of my people. I want you to take it.>

“Seerow’s Law,” I say. The words feel strange in my mouth.

<I can’t save you,> says my husband, who loved me, who left. <I can’t protect this planet. This is all I can give you. This is how I can keep my son safe.>

“Oh,” says Tobias.

I sigh. “Well,” I say. “Your father is an alien. Are you mad at me yet?”

Tobias shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “It’s not really worse than the time you forgot to buy Froot Loops.”

“That was an accident,” I say. “Come on.”

“He has _hooves_ ,” Tobias says. “I don’t have hooves.” He pauses. “Am I going to grow hooves? Is that what happens?”

<I took human form, and settled here,> Elfangor says. <Your physiology is entirely human.>

“Okay, then,” says Tobias. “Nice to meet you, Dad.” He shakes his head. “I have a lot of questions, but I’ll hold them until we’re out of this mess.”

I say, “In my defense, I don’t think you would have believed me if I told you.”

Tobias’ mirth quirks up at the edges. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess you didn’t really have proof.”

  
  


<He’s different,> Elfangor says, thoughtfully, into only my head. <He sees the war differently. We’ve been in it for so long. There are worlds we no longer how to see.>

“We,” I say.

He looks at me. <I thought I had saved you from the war,> he says. There is something in his eyes that is painfully, deeply human.

“We were never that alike,” I say. I don’t know why I’m stuck on it. This idea, that we’re different.

I don’t think I’m better than he is. My war was ugly. He got to be in a ship.

I don’t know if I think I’m worse.

It’s just. It wasn’t the same.

We didn’t spend all this time apart to be the _same._

  
  


-

  
  


When Tobias is seven, he asks why I am never home. We are living near a Yeerk base: Tobias is safe, for now, because he is too young to be worth infesting.

I have blueprints. I am working in a diner with several members of the Sharing, which has something dangerous all over it but I cannot be sure. I am considering trying to get promoted to a higher level. I can’t imagine good things happen when you ascend - I have done my time in space - but I have a good set of guns.

I say, “I have to save the world.”

He’s my son. Of course he thinks I am a superhero.

He looks at me. His eyes are luminous and he looks so tired, like his father, like an old man. “Can someone else do it for a while?” he says. “Call Superman. He doesn’t really do anything. He could help you.”

“Tobias,” I say, helpless.

“Mom,” he says.

  
  


He never asks me for anything. Sometimes I think he is more alien than his DNA ought to let on: there is a strangeness about him, a way he finds calmness in turmoil that reminds me startlingly of his father.

Andalites are sturdier than we are. They have more feet, and that tail.

He has grown up so startlingly alone. This is my fault.

I tried to save him but I did this too.

  
  


“Please,” says Tobias, reaching out for me. “I’m scared you won’t come home.”

I pull him in close. He’s so warm; he smells like himself. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s give it a try.”

  
  


I try. I want it, I think. For him, not so much for me. I get a job, selling pancakes in a diner.

Tobias goes to school and I pick him up every day and kiss his cheek. I don’t think about Yeerks; I don’t think about the factory that’s expanding, spreading its ink-black roots throughout this little town. It is like it was when Tobias was a baby.

I get a boyfriend. Not one I can bring home, but a nice guy who tells jokes about math and clips out the cartoons from the newspaper and doesn’t have nightmares about hell.

Nobody calls, asks me to save them.

I read half of War and Peace and cut my mile time by five seconds. Something in my stomach itches but I tell it, _let someone else save the world_ , and take Tobias out for ice cream instead.

  
  


Two months: two months and that’s it.

I get word through back channels. The girls I work with join up with the Sharing and come back ever so slightly different.

I can see the whole thing coming apart. That’s a Yeerk Pool. They’ve built a Yeerk Pool. Industrial sized.

They’re recruiting even more. Posters about The Sharing are everywhere: _come in, hang out, save the world._

I can’t just let it happen.

Especially not after they take Tobias’ second-grade teacher; she has bright red hair and a broad laugh and my heart wrenches, thinking that she is probably somewhere in there still, screaming. I follow her to the pool and back three times to make sure.

She is wearing a Pokemon sweatshirt and when she thinks nobody is watching she stretches out her arms and legs like it is a new experience, a thing of which to be in awe.

  
  


I sit next to my son and watch him sleep.

There is a knock at the door; I reach for my gun and then put it down. It is my father. But it is never actually my father. My father is a truly absent being.

Runs in the family, I suppose.

“Was this my fault?” I ask.

Time is different around the Ellimist. My son is very still in his bed; his chest does not rise or fall. I reach out and smooth his hair. It is very soft.

“Things might have been different if you had chosen a different path,” says the Ellimist.

  
  


He shows me where to get C4. Well: he hovers, immaterial, at my shoulder as I meet up with the guy with the stuff. It’s moral support. That’s nice.

“I could have stopped them being infested,” I say, setting the charges. “I could have -”

“Time is a many splendoured thing,” the Ellimist says. “You know there is no going back.”

It is a decision you make in times of war. You can’t save everyone; you save yourself. Not because you deserve to live, but because you are simply, expediently, the one who can do the most damage.

  
  


I bundle Tobias into the car while he is asleep. We can’t be around for the fallout. (Runner. I told you.) He’s getting heavier, bigger. Soon I won’t be able to do this. He’ll have to carry himself.

I kiss his hair and I hope I don’t smell too much of smoke.

He wakes up with the sun, hair sticking up, arms stretched out in the back seat.

“Oh,” he says. “Okay, Mom.”

I yawn and rub my eyes.

“It’s okay,” he says. “You go to sleep. I’ll wake you up if anyone comes.”

  
  


I dream that my son has set himself on fire. I am standing too far to help, too far to do anything but scream.

He is smiling as the flames take him.

  
  


-

  
  


“Elfangor,” I say. It hurts to say it. My breath is shallow in my chest. “Okay. Can you do something for me?”

The alien looks at me. His eyes are on stalks. He has a bladed tail. He does not have a mouth. He eats through his hooves.

I have kissed him. I have saved his life. He has saved my life. He gave up that body for me. Together, we made a child.

<What do you need?> Not _want._

I swallow. My throat feels tight. “Show my son his father.”

“Mom,” Tobias says, slowly. “This is not the time.”

“We’re running out of time,” I say. “Unless you don’t have the morph anymore.”

He closes his eyes. <Loren->

“You don’t have to,” Tobias says, rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth. “Mom. He’s dying. We can do this - not now. We’ll get him out, then you can do whatever - then you can punish him.”

<The Ellimist rewound me,> he says. <To before I landed on Earth. Before I ever met you.>

“Oh,” I say. Time has stopped. My heart is hammering. It is so loud I can hear nothing else. It seems all right for me to sit down and exhale very hard and think about the fact that this Elfangor has never known me.

<I wish I could,> he says. <I want that more than anything.>

“It’s okay,” Tobias says. “It’s okay.” He looks at me, thoughtful. “Can you - Mom. Can you check the perimeter?”

My stomach twists. “Yeah,” I say. “Check on the medical situation. We should be able to get him out of here soon.”

  
  


The air is cold and clear. I look up at the moon and think about dying.

I should be running, I should be pulling Elfangor out of there, I should be taking my son: but.

Elfangor is dying.

All I do is run.

  
  


-

  
  


I never wanted to teach my son about war, but it was inevitable. I held it off as long as I could. You never want to tell your child that nightmares are real.

But I am so close to death, always. I sleep with Tobias in my arms and death just over my shoulder, pressed hotly against my back.

  
  


Tobias is eleven. We find a puppy on the side of the road, a little yellow lab with a bloody paw. We bring him home, to a little rental somewhere in the Pacific North West.

I am bandaging up his paw with the gauze we keep under the sink while Tobias holds him steady.

Tobias says, “Mom, are aliens real? Nobody at school says they are. They say I’m being stupid and I should watch less TV.”

I swallow. “You know not to talk about that,” I say.

“They should know,” he says. “They should be safe. They should know what’s happening.”

The puppy barks. I fasten up the bandaging and kiss the top of his head.

“Mom,” Tobias says, very quietly, “Aliens are real, right?”

  
  


There is a Yeerk pool out here, in this sleepy little town. That’s why we have come. I would have come earlier, when it was being built, but this was someone’s pet project. It is not a tactical location. It did not cross my path until now.

My son is eleven years old. He can aim a gun and he knows how to shoot.

I have tried to make it sound like a game. I’m not very good at that. I think I am too brittle: there is only one of me. There have been people I worked with, people I liked, people I trusted, but none of them enough to trust with my son.

We get in, and we get out. Their security is not very good. They don’t expect anyone to be coming for them.

That’s the nice thing, about an early invasion. Not well-planned. Too little ground coordination.

Some of the larger installations by now know they’re looking for someone. Some _ones_.

Not this one. This one, we can walk right in.

  
  


Tobias says, “Let me push the button.” He’s shivering. He held it together inside: he’s brave, he’s tough. He held it together enough to plant the charges, and get out.

I shake my head. “When you’re older,” I say. I pull him close, and together we watch the Yeerk pool explode.

  
  


There is a line. I don’t know what it is anymore. Does it really matter? He believes me, now.

Now he can protect himself. Maybe now I have done enough to keep him safe.

  
  


We lie side by side in the bed of the truck I bought with a stack of cash I got somewhere I don’t want to think about. My back hurts and my fingers are numb.

We’re going to have to drop the dog at a shelter. I haven’t had time to figure out which ones are no-kill. If I leave it in the house they’ll find it, and they kill everything. Leave no stone un-incinerated.

“Mom,” Tobias says.

I kiss his hair. “When I was a kid,” I say, “only a little older than you, aliens took me. When they brought me back, they told me this is what I had to do.”

He taps his fingers on the case of ammunition. “Is that what my father did? Is that why he left?”

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s why he left.”

  
  


-

  
  


The air isn’t right. Something about it is slow, molasses. I reach up and press my fingers to a dust mote. It doesn’t move.

It’s quiet. Too quiet.

I should be hearing traffic. I should be hearing crickets, wildlife. The sounds of the people coming to kill my downed alien husband.

  
  


All of this has happened before.

  
  


I breathe in and feel my ribs expand, straining against my skin. My muscles are screaming. Fight or flight? Usually both. My body knows what this means. _I_ know what this means.

I don’t need to run back to the ship but I do it anyway; fumble with my gun, with my ammunition. I’m not much good in a real fight, you know. I’m good from a distance. I’m good at blowing things up and then running the fuck away.

  
  


We can get in the car and we can drive. We can get all the way out of here. Elfangor will be okay.

We’ll just - we’ll run. Something will work to fix him.

And then we can fight back, find whatever it is that wants to kill him now. We can take it out in the dark, in tiny fragments.

It won’t see us coming.

It can’t see us coming.

  
  


Tobias is sitting next to Elfangor. He is changing the dressing on Elfangor’s side, unspooling the fabric and putting it aside. It’s clotted and disgusting. I don’t let my gaze linger.

“Elfangor,” I say. His name sounds wrong. I want to say _Alan_ but that’s not who this is. “We’ve been sitting here too long. This isn’t right. This isn’t how time works.”

Tobias looks at me through his eyelashes. My son, my beautiful son. I have lead you only into temptation, only into evil. I had no other choice.

That’s not true. I had other choices.

They just were all worse.

“Mom,” he says.

“They should have found us,” I say. “It’s been more than ten minutes.”

<She’s right,> Elfangor says. <My time is long up.>

  
  


There is a knock on the side of the ship. It reverberates through all of us. I freeze, but only for a split second.

I breathe in, sharp. My hand flies to my belt; Tobias’ gun is out, Elfangor’s tail gleaming as he surges to his feet. “Wait,” I say.

“Hey, everybody,” says the Ellimist, who, as always, looks like my father. “Been a while.”

“What the _fuck_ ,” says Tobias.

Elfangor closes his eyes. <Ah,> he says.

“I figured I owed you one,” the Ellimist says. “The two of you, you’re resourceful. You can do a lot, given a little time. You can get yourselves out of this one.”

“Of all the starships in all the universe,” I say. “I had to walk into this one.”

<No such thing as coincidence,> Elfangor says. <Not when the Ellimist is around.>

My father smiles. “That’s not fair,” he says.

“He’s not wrong,” I say.

  
  


-

  
  


“I have something you might be interested in.”

It’s a drop phone, a burner line. One of the messages I check every once in a while; people I’ve managed to save. There aren’t that many of them. This isn’t a profession you get into if you like the win.

“Oh?”

“There’s something in the city,” says Chapman. “You should come and check it out.”

“Why are you telling me?”

There’s a pause. Then: “I don’t want to go back to a world that’s a Yeerk pool,” he says. “I think you’re the difference.”

  
  


“I don’t know,” Tobias says, picking at a slice of pepperoni pizza. “This doesn’t seem like that great of an idea.”

“We hunt aliens,” I say, cracking open my can of Diet Coke. “Nothing really sounds like a great idea when you say it out loud.” I smile. My mouth hurts. My stomach is tight and my fingers are burnt with gunpowder.

He shrugs. He is getting tighter around the edges by the day. I am sorry for it, but we are in a war. He is wound tight but he is becoming good at this.

Better than I was.

“You’re the boss,” he says.

  
  


We drive all night. Tobias sleeps against the window and I look at his face, the way the starlight hits it; the way he murmurs softly in his sleep and jolts awake when we hit slightly rough terrain. His hand goes for his gun and I say _shhh it’s all right_ and he subsides.

I have only ever wanted him to be free.

I don’t wake him when we cross city limits. Instead I drive through the neighbourhoods; none of them are familiar, but it’s a familiar kind of city. The sort of mid-sized place that occupies a certain space in the American imagination: something like a dream of sprawling suburbs, schools, corner stores.

Tobias could have grown up here.

But they are building a Yeerk pool so instead we will stay, for a little while, and then there will be a massive explosion and before anyone can check on us we will be gone.

And that’s assuming things go according to plan.

  
  


I should know by now, things never go according to plan.

You would think I would know better than to go chasing alien spacecraft plummeting out of the sky. But hey: it got me my husband the first time. Might as well see what happens now.

  
  


Here’s the thing about Andalite spacecraft: even when they’re smashed up, scratched up, missing all their pieces, embedded in the dirt.

They’re so goddamn beautiful. So beautiful it hurts. There’s something about the architecture, the way the curvature hits the light and your eyes. It’s like an Andalite’s tail: a blade, but it’s organic. It doesn’t feel wrong.

You don’t forget that kind of beautiful. Not as long as you live. It’s the kind of thing I imagine you think about when you die.

Andalite architecture looks like justice.

  
  


  
  


-

“So you want something,” I say. My stomach is twisting up in knots.

“Go outside,” the Ellimist says. “Go look. There’s an entrance to the lot, you have to find the hole in the chain link.”

Tobias helps Elfangor up. There is something about the way the Ellimist speaks: you don’t really say no to him.

  
  


“Oh,” Tobias says. “It’s Jake.” He looks at me and shakes his head. “We had a class together.”

Four kids are frozen in time, on their way into the construction site. They’re all his age. They’re wearing jeans and t-shirts and one of them is laughing, a dark-haired dark-skinned girl with friendly eyes.

They’re walking into a firefight. Just beyond them, I can see the shapes of a Yeerk phalanx, on its way in.

  
  


<Children,> says Elfangor, limply. He staggers a little and I hold him up, carefully. I am stronger than I look.

I raised my child to be in a war. I feel like: it is different. I can’t really make claims about innocence. I did what I did.

I have always been kind. But I don’t think that makes me good.

“If we leave,” I say, “they’ll be caught, afterwards. They’ll be infested.”

<They’re so young,> my husband says.

  
  


“You don’t owe us anything,” I say. It hits me hard, a jackhammer to the chest. “You gave us everything.”

My father crosses his arms over chest. “Loren,” he says, easy. “I told you with time you could figure anything out.”

I say, “You want us to do something.” My eyes are hot. My skin is burning. “You want us to save them.”

“I don’t make any choices,” says the Ellimist. “I only offer options.”

  
  


“Tobias gets out,” I say. “I’m not giving up Tobias.”

I look right into the Ellimist’s eyes. Every time I do this I try to look for the thing that is alien, the thing that makes him not be my father.

I can never find it. He is only wrong because I know he is wrong.

The Ellimist nods at me. Just - very small.

He used to hold Tobias when he was a baby. Tobias used to make him smile.

“Mom,” Tobias says.

“Shh,” I say. I think I might be crying. It’s so funny; I have almost died so many times, but I have never cried. And now I could walk away. I could take my son and go. I could take my husband and go. My husband, who I love.

I told myself I didn’t. It was so much easier to not, to wrap myself in layers of abandonment and gunpowder and steel. To love Tobias with everything in me, because nothing else mattered.

That’s not true. It has never been true. I have always loved him. I have always known why he left.

  
  


We could run. Elfangor would heal, in time. I am the best person on this planet at outrunning Yeerks and now we can _morph._

We would fight another day: Elfangor is an Andalite. They are built to fight. They have built themselves to be at war.

I did that. I did that to myself; I did that to my son. We would be effective. We have _been_ effective.

We could save the world, maybe. We could slow down its end, at the very least.

These kids, they aren’t going to do anything. They’re children.

The smart thing to do, the expedient thing to do - I know what it is.

  
  


<Loren,> Elfangor says. <We are in agreement, I think.>

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, we are.”

  
  


You have to stop running sometime.

They are all Tobias’ age.

I was Tobias’ age, when I met Elfangor.

  
  


-

  
  


I am eighteen, but I look twenty-two. I am lying on my back in the softball diamond staring up at the stars.

“Do you miss them?” I ask. “Your home. Your family.”

“I do,” Alan says. “But I was raised to be a warrior. When I shipped out the first time, I knew I might not come home.”

I thread my fingers through his, and hold tight. “I’m sorry,” I say.

He shakes his head. “It’s a war,” he says. “Things happen in wars.”

  
  


It’s funny to hear these things, coming from him. Now he looks so human. I almost forget.

  
  


-

  
  


“I can do something for you,” the Ellimist says. “Let me give you something.”

“You’ve already given us everything,” I say. It sounds bitter, and it is. But it is also true.

The Ellimist sighs and reaches out to Elfangor. “Here,” he says. The shape of his body ripples. Now he is my husband: Alan, the man I married in a courthouse ceremony, with his wry smile and his large eyes. “Acquire me.”

<Oh,> Elfangor says, reaching up.

  
  


It takes a moment. I stare. It’s been a long time since I watched a morph. They’re ugly, honestly: the way the limbs retract, the way the body reforms, and the fucking _sounds -_ not a nice time.

But useful, I assume.

  
  


“Alan,” I say. I cannot stop staring at him, at the shape of his mouth and the warmth of his eyes and the way he _stands._ I have missed him so much, I have wanted him so much; the only way to survive was to forget it but it is all rushing back now, overwhelming.

I don’t move. I just breathe in, and breathe out.

“Dad,” Tobias says, raw and low. “This is my father.”

“Hi, Tobias,” Alan says, holding out his arms. “I’m so sorry it took me so long to be here. I thought of you all the time I was gone.”

Tobias folds into the shape of him and holds on, very tight.

Alan smiles at me. “Hi, Lor,” he says. “Missed ya.”

  
  


The Ellimist winks at me. “Family time,” he says. “Must be nice.”

I shake my head at him and go to kiss my son’s hair and hug my husband. I think my arms are too tight but nobody says anything.

I am at any given moment liable to go off, to bolt, to explode: here, now, I feel like I could stay still, at home, forever.

  
  


I am crying. I am smiling so much it hurts.

I think I may have a plan.

  
  


-

  
  


It takes two hours to be trapped in morph forever. In the Andalite parlance, a trapped person is called a _nothlit._ They are deeply pitied by everyone around them. There’s no way, barring the influence of a minor god, to get it undone.

I buy Elfangor a tub of ice cream and tell him to tell me everything that is wrong with _TRON_ in real-time as we watch, and that is it.

Boom, done.

  
  


“Thank you,” I say, watching the timer click over.

He folds his long human fingers around mine. “No,” he says. “Thank you.”

  
  


It took him a while to learn how to smile without making it look creepy. The first few attempts were pretty alarming; I clapped my hand over my mouth and laughed at the way he bared too much tooth, made his eyes go wide and huge.

Now he is better.

Now he just smiles, and it is warm and sweet, like the person I have come to know.

The person I have come to love.

“Welcome to the human race,” I say. “It’s an honor to have you.”

He laughs, and leans in, and kisses me. “Was that right?”

“Yes,” I say, breathless, and do it again.

  
  


-

  
  


Morphing technology is truly amazing. It lets you return to your originary state: the truest form of your DNA. It doesn’t keep any pesky wounds, like the ones you might get from a crash through the atmosphere and into a planet’s surface.

When the body of my husband peels away, the Elfangor that emerges is entirely, beautifully, whole.

“Oh my god,” says Tobias. “You’re gonna give the Visser a run for his fucking money.”

  
  


Tobias will take the kids. He’ll get them out, so nobody sees that they were ever here. He’s tough enough that he can handle this, if he has to.

We’ll be the distraction. We’re a spaceship, crippled as it is. And there will be two Andalites. Enough to slow things down.

“We’ll meet you,” I say. “We’ll find you, after.”

“If you can find me I don’t think I’ll have done my job right,” Tobias says. There is a stillness about him. The stillness of the war.

“You can find me, then,” I say.

He leans in and hugs me. He’s getting tall, growing like a weed. “I love you,” he says. “Mom, I love you so much.”

<You take the morphing cube,> Elfangor says. <It can’t be in their hands.>

Tobias smiles. “I know,” he says. He reaches up and touches the alien chest with two fingers. This is where, in a human, you could find a heartbeat. “It’s okay, dad. I forgive you.”

He kisses my cheek, and then he is gone.

  
  


Me and Elfangor: we’re runners. Both of us have always run.

Tobias was always the one who wanted to stay in one place.

  
  


<You just reach out,> Elfangor says. <Touch me, focus on me. Just - think about the shape of me. Let it in.>

My fingers shake. I watched Tobias do it but it’s different, now that it’s me.

I feel it. I hold on, tight, and watch Elfangor go loose and still.

  
  


It’s easier than I thought it would be. I just think about him and - go.

I can feel my body shifting, feel the limbs extending: the noise is huge, the physicality of it enormous. But it’s how it feels that gets me.

It’s like: there’s someone else in my head. Someone who knows how this body works, who knows how to balance things, who knows that _this_ motion is how the tail moves, this is how to scan the room and look all the way around it.

But it’s more than that. There’s another mind, almost.

_Elfangor._

  
  


I think _it’s me, it’s Loren, let me-_ and he does.

Symbiosis.

The feeling, the knowledge is overwhelming. _You are loved._ I have never thought about how much you would have to love someone, to make the genetic echo of you whisper _yes, yes, yes_.

  
  


<Hey,> I say. <This could be fun. Something different.> Everything feels different. The balance of my tail, the sharp way everything in the world slides into focus.

<Sure,> he says. With Andalite eyes I can see all these things about him, things I had never known. He looks tired. <I missed you.>

<You did the right thing when you left,> I say. I inhale, feel what must be the Andalite equivalent of adrenaline running through my veins. <Let’s get this done.>

  
  


Time starts.

It is so goddamn loud.

I had forgotten how loud it would be.

  
  


-

  
  


Somewhere in the back of this body, there is a dream, a hope.

Elfangor spent all that time floating in space, pretending I had never existed, would never exist, but somewhere in there:

A summer day, lazy and hot, sun in the sky and in your eyes. A woman, her blonde hair in a loose ponytail, stooping, to teach her son to throw a ball.

  
  


I get it. I have the same dream: Tobias with his arms around me, laughing. Alan kissing my cheek.

We are in a spaceship. Alan is teaching Tobias to fly. He’s good at it, has a knack.

The whole universe is stretched out beyond us, and we are free.

  
  


I probably wouldn’t be any good at any of this, anyway.

All I can do these days is blow shit up, and run away from the collateral damage.

  
  


-

  
  


“This was a brave thing to do,” the Ellimist says. “Maybe you’ll survive, maybe you won’t.”

Time stills. I am dangling from an array of tentacles. If I could scream I would be screaming. This thing the Visser has become has too many teeth. I can see how this will end and it is not pleasant.

<Okay,> I say. <Thanks.>

I can see Elfangor, with his tail blade raised, hooves pounding. There are so many Hork-Bajir upon him.

He knew he was dying when he landed here.

The Ellimist shrugs. “You can make the other choice,” he says. “You don’t have to be a warrior. You can leave this fight up to someone else.”

<I have a son,> I say, sharp and immediate.

“A son you raised to fight a war,” he says. “You can take it back.”

He shows me: a future Tobias, a hawk, a bird, an Andalite; always a warrior. Blood everywhere. My son with blank, empty eyes. My son, so close with death he can smile at it, hold it close.

There is a whole planet to fight for. A whole invasion that’s coming. Someone has to fight for us, and it is Tobias. My son, who kills without blinking. Because it is what must be done.

This is never what I wanted. I always wanted him to be safe, but more than that to be free.

This doesn’t look like freedom.

  
  


<I only wanted to save him,> I say. My heart is pumping too fast. I am reeling. <That’s all I wanted. I tried my best.>

The Ellimist says, “You can unmake this choice.”

<You swear to me,> I say. <You swear that he’ll be safe.>

“I can’t make those promises,” the Ellimist says. “I can promise he won’t live like this.”

  
  


We set the Andalite ship for self-destruct. It’s possible we’ll fight our way out of this, have the backing of that explosion to run like hell.

Things might be all right.

  
  


I close my eyes, very tight.

  
  


-

  
  


Alan says, “He’s so beautiful, Lor.” His arm is wrapped around my shoulders and he leans in to kiss my sweaty forehead.

I laugh. I’m laughing. My whole body is weak and sore, I’m so fucking tired I want to pass out, but I can’t - I am so full of joy. “Hi, Tobias,” I say. “Welcome to Earth.”

The baby yawns in my arms, and tips his face against my chest, and goes to sleep.

  
  


-

  
  


_If it is any consolation,_ the Ellimist says, _you raised him well. He is loved. He will die a hero. He will save the world._

That’s never what I wanted.

  
  


Make a choice, Loren.

Make the right goddamn choice.

  
  


 

 


End file.
